Deborah lost all sense of time in that uniformly dark prison. Three times after the thin man had cut off a lock of her hair, the door opened, and the burly man who had hit her came in with a plate of bread and cheese, and a mug of what looked and smelled like ale.
The first time, though her throat still ached from when he had half-choked her, she had disdained drinking the ale. The prospect of having to use that bucket later on, and either have him empty it with a smirk, or leave it to add its pungency to the already nasty smell of the place, were both too horrible to contemplate. She had torn a strip off her petticoat, dipped it in the ale jug, and pressed it against her brow, though, hoping the alcohol might cleanse the cut, which simply would not stop bleeding. It only made her feel worse. Not only did it sting rather badly, but now she stank of ale too.
Not long after that, she began to scratch. And she discovered that the mattress, upon which she had been sitting, was hopping with fleas. Horrified, she leapt to her feet, and made for the furthest corner of her cell. She could not stand still for ever, though. The blood seemed to pool in her feet, making her feel faint. She tried pacing up and down, which helped a little, but she could not keep going indefinitely. Eventually, when exhaustion overcame her, she crouched in a corner, as far from the verminous mattress as she could.
When, at length, the door opened, and the burly man brought in fresh food and ale, she felt too weary, her legs too stiff and her back too sore to wish to reach for it. And the darkness, which had seeped into her soul, as dampness soaked into her clothes, made her wonder whether it was worth trying to keep her strength up anyway. She dared not hope Robert would part with any money to rescue her. It was the money he cared about, not her. But her captors had said ‘someone’ would pay. It was increasingly obvious that ‘someone’ would be her.
A shudder racked her body. She would never be strong enough to fight them. They would do what they wanted with her. They would make her suffer. Her only hope was that she might be too weak to survive her punishment for long. In a spurt of defiance, she kicked over the ale jug, and ground the stale piece of bread into the floor, the crumbs mingling with the mildewed mortar that held the bricks in place.
The last time her enemy had come in, she had felt too weak to even reach for the dishes he dropped on to the floor next to her. Her very frailty caused a brief flare of triumph to loosen the despair that had closed round her, like an iron fist, as the unremitting darkness had gone on, and on. It might not be so very much longer, she smiled to herself, before she was out of here.
She could hear her jailor moving about on the other side of her door. She heard another man join him. She heard the low murmur of male voices, a chair rasping across the brick floor, and then periods of quiet, interspersed with terse outbursts of profanities. From the occasional recognisable word that filtered in through the grille, she deduced that they were playing cards.
Then there came a clatter of booted feet on the cellar steps. The beginning of a shout was choked off into a grunt of pain, and then it sounded as though somebody was throwing furniture about.
There was a fight going on.
‘Deborah!’
She lifted her head from where she had been resting it on her bent knees.
‘Robert?’
She could hardly believe her ears.
‘Deborah, where are you?’
From some hidden inner reserve, she gathered the last of her strength and crawled to the door. ‘In here!’ she croaked hoarsely, straining upwards to try and reach the grille. ‘Robert!’ Her voice was rusty from disuse. He would never be able to hear her. In desperation, she raised her fists, and pounded ineffectually against the stout door.
She heard the sound of the bolts being drawn; before she could get out of the way, the door swung inwards, pushing her aside so that she sprawled inelegantly in the middle of the floor.
And Robert stood there, a dark silhouette against the dim light from the outer cellar.
Her arms shook with the effort it took to raise herself to a sitting position. She felt as though she had expended the last of her strength in making him hear her. But he just stood there, in stony silence, and somehow she knew she was going to have to get up on her own.
He did not want to be here. He could not have made it more obvious if he had shouted it. The very way he drew to one side, as she finally managed to stagger towards the open door, spoke of his reluctance to so much as touch her.
But he had come. She would live.
And that knowledge gave her the strength to reach the doorway, where she leaned for a moment or two, her head spinning.
In the outer room four men were fighting like demons. Her jaw dropped at recognising one of them was the Marquis of Lensborough. The first time she had met him, she had thought he was an ugly customer, and he certainly had an ugly expression on his face now. But it was magnificent to behold, for the man he was pounding, as though he were a punch bag in a boxing school, was the man who had taken such pleasure in hurting her.
Her hand flew to her mouth as the other villain, the one who had been driving the cab, raised a chair to smash over her other rescuer’s head. To her shock, she recognised the gleaming golden brown hair of the Earl of Walton. But the Earl surprised both her and his assailant with the agility of his next manoeuvre. He sprang aside, dodging the chair and simultaneously raising his knee to jam it into his assailant’s stomach. As the cab driver doubled over, the chair somehow ended up in the Earl’s capable hands. He brought it smashing down over the kidnapper’s head, a split second after the Marquis dealt a massive knockout punch to the burly villain’s jaw.
The kidnappers lay sprawled amongst the smashed furniture. The Earl and the Marquis stood there panting, then grinned at each other like a pair of mischievous schoolboys as they reached over the bodies to shake one another’s hands.
‘This way,’ said Robert, extending his arm to indicate a stairway, snaking up out of the cellar. ‘And be quick about it.’
Flinching at the curtness of his tone, Deborah tottered towards the stairs. She had not gone more than a few steps, before the Marquis took one arm, the Earl her other, and they half-dragged, half-carried her up the stairs, while Robert followed behind. The four of them emerged into a dank courtyard in which stood a plain black cab. Linney was sitting on the box, a brace of pistols sweeping the few people who dared to poke their noses out of the doorways or windows.
‘How did you find me?’ asked Deborah, once they had all got into the cab. ‘Did you have to pay a ransom? That man said you owed him money—’
‘Lampton owed him money,’ said Robert curtly as the Earl and the Marquis settled on the seats opposite them. And it was Lampton who told me where I might find you.’
The coach set off with a jolt that flung Deborah back into the cushions. Robert steadied her, then moved away swiftly. So swiftly that she had to turn her head away from him to hide her hurt.
‘Your man may be handy to have about in a tight spot, but he is no coachman,’ observed the Marquis, grabbing hold of the strap.
‘You are a handy man to have in a tight spot too,’ said Deborah, turning wide eyes upon his saturnine features. ‘I must thank you for what you have done today. Both of you,’ she added, addressing the Earl.
‘I am merely returning a favour Captain Fawley did, not so very long ago, for my own wife,’ the Marquis replied coolly.
‘Think nothing of it,’ added the Earl. Then, turning to Robert, he drawled, ‘I had no idea taking you into my home would provide me with such adventures.’
They kept up a constant barrage of inane observations, reminding her again of a pair of naughty schoolboys who had just got away with some prank. It didn’t take her long to work out that much of the badinage was intended to distract her, for which she was grateful. The last thing she wanted to do was break down in front of two such aristocratic males and, judging from the way neither of them could quite meet her eye, the sight of a female in tears would make them extremely uncomfortable too. And she had felt very inclined to burst into tears when the cab had set off, signalling her ordeal was at an end.
The Earl and the Marquis helped her out of the cab when it stopped in an alley at the back of Walton House. Contrary to her expectations, there was a flight of steps leading to Robert’s back door, which they reached by crossing a paved yard. There was even a sign on the door, bearing his name, and a doorknocker in the shape of a lion’s head, as though this were a private, rented apartment, rather than an integral part of Walton House.
The Countess was waiting for them. The moment she saw them, she leapt to her feet, her eyes widening in horror at Deborah’s appearance. Her next action was to snatch up a blanket from the sofa on which she had been sitting, hurry to her side, and drape it round her, shooting just one reproachful look at Robert as she did so.
‘Nobody must see her looking like this,’ she exclaimed. ‘What were you thinking?’
‘Of getting her out of that place, primarily,’ Robert snapped back. ‘But at least I took the precaution of smuggling her in by the back door. Nobody knows about this dreadful business,’ he said to Deborah. ‘We have managed to hush it up. I was sure you would not want to distress your mother. So whenever enquiries were made as to your whereabouts, I said either you were indisposed, or out shopping, depending on who was doing the asking. Now I suggest you go upstairs with Lady Walton, who will see to your immediate needs.’
It was as if he could not wait to be rid of her, she thought, glancing at his set features.
Strangely, her earlier desire to weep had frozen solid under the blast of his coldness. She could feel it, a tangible presence, just under her breastbone, as though she had swallowed a lump of ice. It was amazing, she reflected as Lady Walton led her up the stairs, just how much strength pride could lend to legs that she had thought too weak to carry her one step further.
‘You will feel better for a bath and something to eat,’ said the Countess, ushering her into her pretty, feminine sitting room.
‘Will I?’ She shook her head, wearily. She had not been able to forget for one second, even through all her other terrors, that her husband was about to embark on an affair with another woman. So far as he was concerned, she could not have got herself kidnapped at a more inconvenient moment. He must have had to go to a great deal of trouble to effect her rescue, when he would much rather have been planning …
Feeling a wave of faintness overcome her, Deborah dropped on to the nearest sofa, bowing her head over her knees.
‘Here, here!’ The Countess knelt at her feet, holding up a teacup and saucer.
‘I thought you never took tea,’ Deborah attempted to joke weakly, as she gratefully took the hot, sweet drink.
‘Oh, no, I hate it. But you English love it, and say it is restorative, and you look as though you need to be restored. Did they not feed you? Oh, pardon! I am not supposed to pester you with questions. Robert said you would not want to talk about it.’
Getting to her feet, the Countess went to the fireplace and tugged on the bell rope.
‘Please to come into my bedroom, Deborah. The maids will bring up water for a bath, but I am sure you will not want them to see you …’ She trailed off, her eyes darting to her face, and then flinching away.
For the first time, Deborah wondered what her face looked like. It ached all over, so she supposed it must be bruised. Draining her cup to the dregs, she followed the Countess through into an opulent bedchamber. The bed was hung with velvet curtains, the carpet was a soft swathe of blue that invited a woman to sink her bare feet into it, and there were bowls of fresh flowers upon several of the little tables that dotted the room. She could smell them, above the stench of imprisonment that clung to her clothes. Everything looked so clean, and so delicately feminine, that Deborah felt as though she were polluting the place just by standing there in all her grime and disorder.
The Countess darted out, upon hearing the maids clanking about with cans of water in the dressing room, and Deborah took a moment to go to the dressing table and peer at her reflection in the mirror. Her face was swollen almost out of recognition. She had a black eye that would not have looked out of place on a professional boxer, and a crusted scab over her eyebrow. Her hair on that side of her face was matted with blood from that cut, and her mouth … She touched it gingerly with the tips of her fingers. Her lower lip was puffy and scabbed from that initial, casual cuff.
Absently, she reached under the sleeve of her dress, to scratch at one of the fleabites on her wrist, then suddenly she was tearing off her filthy clothes. By the time the Countess returned to tell her the bath was ready, Deborah was crouching naked before the fire, holding her petticoat in the flames with a poker.
‘It has to be burned,’ she explained, when Lady Walton looked at her in amazement. ‘All of it. Right down to my shoes.’ It was the only way to stop the fleas from getting into the carpets and curtains. When the Countess made an involuntary movement towards her, she held up her hand to ward her off. ‘No, I must do this myself!’ She did not think she carried any fleas on her person, but she did not want to take the chance of passing them on, if she had.
As she stood up, she noticed that her knees were badly grazed, though she could not remember exactly when that had happened. It could have been when she had fallen to the cobbles, when the burly man hauled her out of the cab. Or later, when she had been forced to her knees in the cell after they cut off her hair. By the way the Countess had been glancing at her back, then looking hastily away, as though something distressed her, she guessed she had bruises all over her.
The Countess proffered a large towel. ‘Your bath is ready,’ she said, her eyes full of tears.
‘Oh, yes, how I need one,’ Deborah agreed. She had been in the same clothes for she knew not how many hours. Fear had made her sweat profusely during several thoroughly unpleasant incidents. That cell had been filthy, the men who had manhandled her had left their rank odour in her nostrils … Was she just imagining it, or was it really there? And then, of course, she had attempted to wash her cut in ale. She must smell like something out of a tavern.
Though a bath in water, no matter how deliciously scented, would never erase the imprint of ugliness and evil from her mind. She had seen another face of human nature these past few days, and she already sensed the experience had left an indelible stain on her soul. As she sank gratefully into the perfumed water, she murmured, ‘I wonder if I will ever feel completely clean again.’ Then, concerned lest any of the fleas should have taken up lodging in her hair, she slid beneath the surface of the water, immersing herself in the hope she might drown them.
Robert sat on the sofa, an untouched tumbler of brandy in his hand, staring blindly at the floor between his boots. He did not think he would ever get the image of Deborah, cowering on that filthy straw mattress, her face all over bruises, her dress soiled and torn, out of his mind. He had wanted to go to her and carry her out of that foul cell, wrap her in his arms and tell her he would never let anyone hurt her ever again.
Instead, he had to endure the humiliation of letting others fight for her freedom, and accept that he would never be able to lift her in his arms and carry her anywhere. When she had got into the coach, and he had seen the bruises on her neck, it had been all he could do to restrain himself from marching straight back into that warehouse and shooting the brutes where they lay on the floor.
He had been angry enough at the thought of Deborah being taken, imprisoned, and perhaps frightened. But to see what they had done to her … blacked her eye, split her lip, half-strangled her … to have left such marks on her body attested to a level of violence that told its own story. There was only one reason why men held a woman by the throat, punched her in the face and tore her gown.
How many of them had raped her? How often? She had been in their clutches for a night and the best part of two days. He groaned, leaning his forehead on his hand to hide the tears, which were stinging his eyes, from Linney’s notice.
It was all his fault. He had never considered what repercussions might rebound upon her when he had been making his plans to best Percy Lampton. Not that he could have foreseen she might have suffered this level of brutality. But nor had he taken any steps to ensure her safety, when he should have known … He thumped his thigh with his clenched fist.
It had all got completely out of hand. This feud with the Lamptons had gone too far! Because of his obsession with them, Deborah had suffered the most terrible fate that could befall a woman.
It was not the men who had raped her that should be shot, it was he. He had brought her to this.
He had crept in to her bedroom, and stood over her, just filling his eyes with the sight of her, once Heloise had come to tell him she had fallen asleep.
‘She must have been exhausted,’ Heloise had said, as they had climbed the stairs, side by side. ‘I wondered, after all she had suffered, and considering the pain she must feel, if I would need to give her something to help her sleep, but almost before she had finished her bath, she was struggling to keep her eyes open. And she told me she had hardly slept at all … nor does she seem to know what day it is, for it was so dark in the cell ….’
He had not been surprised to hear she had fallen asleep so quickly. She had obviously exhausted her meagre reserves of strength trying to fight off those men. Her whole body had been trembling with the effort it had taken her just to get up off that filthy floor.
Heloise had gone on to tell him how Deborah had burned her clothes, saying she would never feel clean again, and his heart had sunk to his boots.
She had begun to tactfully withdraw from the bedroom, intending to leave him alone with his wife. But he prevented her. Their marriage had faltered to the degree where the last thing she would want, if she should wake, was to see him looming over her. It would be like waking from one nightmare into another. He stood, ramrod straight, cursing himself as he looked down at her battered face.
She had not bothered to plait her hair neatly for bed. It spread in damp tendrils all over her pillow, making her look very young and vulnerable.
He longed to reach down and take one of those locks of damp hair in his fingers, raise it to his lips and kiss it. He had dreamed of her hair, the night she had been away from him, the few times he had managed to doze off. He had dreamed he was running his fingers through it, as she lay beside him, smiling up at him with the sleepy satisfaction he had sometimes had the privilege of imparting to her face. But then her image had shimmered, and dissipated like mist on a breeze. He had leapt out of bed, run to the door, and, shouting her name, run out into the street to search for her. But that mist closed in, blinding him, and as he batted it from his face with his hands, he would wake, sweating and shaking, to the harsh reality of his life. He had lost the hand, the one he had dreamed was filled with the silken texture of his wife’s hair, in a makeshift hospital tent outside Salamanca. Nor would he ever leap, or run anywhere, ever again. But that loss was as nothing compared with the pain of knowing his Deborah was gone, and he did not know how to get her back.
She should have a decent husband, one who could protect her, not a useless cripple, who drew danger down on himself and those around him!
Most of all, she should have someone she could turn to, someone who could hold her in his arms and comfort her, not a man whose touch could only add to her distress.
He ached for her isolation. Yet he knew there was nobody she could talk to about her ordeal. It would be like living it all over again. As a soldier, he had encountered women who had been brutalised by French troops, and the last thing any of them had wanted was to have anyone so much as mention their violation.
Eventually he had retreated to his rooms, though he knew he would not sleep tonight. Knowing she was upstairs, and safe, should have brought relief. Instead his agony was redoubled by the knowledge that, if she had not hated him before this, she surely would do now. She was more lost to him than ever.
Bone weary, he sank on to a sofa with a glass of brandy. It had taken hours of painstaking searching through Hincksey’s known haunts before a handful of guineas had brought them the information he needed.
‘Want to know where Hincksey would hold a woman?’ the denizen of Tothill Fields had leered. ‘Same place as he always takes them, to break them in, I’d wager.’
When Robert had seen her in that place, he had wanted to howl with rage and pain. His Deborah, his beautiful wife, defiled by those brutes! And all he could do was stand there, and look at her, knowing that if he once knelt down on that floor, and took her in his arms, he would have broken down completely. But there was no time for such self-indulgence. Hincksey had left only two men to guard her, but he was the head of a criminal gang, whose members ruled the area they had infiltrated. All they had on their side was the element of surprise. They had to swoop in and get her out, fast.
Walton and Lensborough had both agreed, having seen the state of her, that there should be no trial. Though kidnapping alone was a hanging offence, bringing the villains to trial would mean Deborah would have to give evidence. She would have to relate all that had happened.
All of it.
And though if ever two men deserved to hang, it was those brutes, he could not expose Deborah to the shame of having all society knowing what they had done to her.
Once she had recovered enough to travel, he would send her out of London.
She was too straightforward a person to want to have to make up some tale about how she had come by her facial injuries. So she could not go to The Dovecote, where the servants, who had no idea how they ought to behave towards their betters, would all expect some kind of explanation. No, it was better that she stay among people who knew what had happened, and could help her to come to terms with it.
He knew Walton wanted Heloise to travel down to Wycke for the birth of their child. Nobody would question it if Deborah went with them. What could be more natural than for a lady to want her sister-in-law to be with her for the lying-in? Everyone knew Heloise had no other female relatives in England.
Deborah could avoid having to answer any questions that might arise from her inability to go out of doors until the bruises healed. He had his own suite of rooms at Wycke, to which she could retreat should she wish for privacy. And female company, in the form of Lady Walton, should she need to confide in someone.
It was the best he could do for her.
‘How are you feeling today?’ Heloise chirruped brightly, coming in behind the maid who bore her breakfast tray.
Numb. She felt numb. She just could not dredge up any sort of emotion at all. It was as if all her capacity to feel had frozen solid.
She assayed a polite smile and replied, ‘Oh, much better, thank you. I slept so well.’
It had seemed unreal, when she had woken earlier, to find herself in this beautifully soft bed, with its crisp, clean sheets and velvet hangings, in a room that smelled of flowers. And to be wearing another of the Countess’s scandalous nightgowns.
She had reached out for Robert, during the night, but of course, he wasn’t there. And then she remembered that she would never wake up next to him again. For a while, she had found it hard to breathe. It felt as though a great weight was crushing her. But slowly, slowly, as she had lain on her back, gazing up at the pleated velvet canopy, listening to her breath going in and out, in and out, the numbness returned. And she welcomed it.
She endured the day as well as she could, replying with politeness to all the Countess’s attempts to draw her into conversation, meekly eating what food was set before her and then getting dressed, when a selection of clothing was brought upstairs for her from Robert’s rooms. She refused the offer of a visit from a doctor. She was sure her physical injuries were only superficial. Bruises always faded in a day or so.
The Countess finally left her alone when she claimed she still felt exhausted, but, though she lay down on the bed, sleep was far from her.
Why had Robert not come? She knew he did not care for her, but could he not at least have pretended? Just this once?
Though why should he, when he had warned her, from the very start, that he would not pretend anything he did not feel, or use soft words when blunt ones would serve his purpose much better?
The day dragged interminably on, the one maid who had been granted the task of caring for her tiptoeing around her, wide-eyed, as though she was some sort of bomb that might explode upon the least provocation.
And Robert did not come to see how she was.
She ate, and slept another night, in her own nightgown this time. One that she’d brought up to London with her, which had remained among her things during the moves from The Dovecote to Robert’s rooms. It had worn almost transparent from washing, and had a patch near the hem where she’d put her foot through.
As she lay in the solitary comfort of the Countess of Walton’s bed, it seemed symbolic of her state. Once, she had slept naked in her husband’s arms. Now, she slept alone, in the nightgown she had worn as a single woman.
Single.
Alone.
She found it harder to rouse herself from bed the next morning. She had tossed and turned all night, replaying every single minute of her relationship with Robert, trying to see if there was anything she could have done differently, any way she could have made him love her, just a little.
And the harder she thought about it, the more she began to see that she had made excuses for him every time he had been rude or unkind. She had built him up in her imagination into something he was not, then clung to this image of him, when all the evidence was to the contrary.
The imaginary Captain Fawley, the hero of the Peninsula War with whom she had fallen in love, would have come to her, sat with her holding her hand lest she have nightmares, kissed her bruises and told her she was beautiful in his eyes, not flinched from her appearance as though it turned his stomach.
The real Captain Fawley was a hypocrite. He knew what it felt like to have people turn their eyes from his injuries, and yet he had done just that, to her!
He had only married her to spite Percy Lampton. He had wanted to hurt the other man, and did not care whom he used to achieve his aims. He had urges, and had used her to satisfy them. And because she had been a romantic fool, and had responded with love, he had called her a slut. And had then carried on pursuing Susannah.
She had been such a fool! She had fallen headlong in love with a schoolgirl’s vision of a wounded hero, not the real man at all.
By the time he did come up to the Countess’s sitting room, after dinner on the second day, she was having trouble remembering what she had ever seen in him. And it was all she could do to keep her resentment reined back when he walked in. How could he have done this to her? Made her love him, then made her fall out of love just as fast?
She could feel the ice round her heart melting under a scorching blast of anger. Which was swiftly followed by the most agonising pain. Oh, how she wished she were still frozen in shock. Falling out of love hurt far, far worse than falling into it. For when she had fallen, she had at least had hope. Now there was none.
‘What do you want?’ she shot at him, as he hesitated upon the threshold.
‘I have only come to inform you that arrangements have been made for you to accompany Lord and Lady Walton to Wycke, when they remove there at the end of the week. I will not be going with you. I thought it would be for the best.’
Yes, he would want to stay in London with Susannah while the Season lasted. Sending her to the family estate, to be a companion to the Countess during her lying-in, would cause no undue comment in society at all. He would be rid of her, well rid of her.
And she of him!
Lifting her chin a notch, she said, ‘I could not agree more. Is that all?’
‘No. I thought you would wish to know there will not be a trial, as a result of your … ordeal. Nobody need know if you do not tell them.’
So, he did not think it worth prosecuting the men who had dragged her off the street, beaten and starved her and held her captive? What further proof did she need of his total lack of compassion? He just wanted the whole incident swept under the carpet.
Just as he wanted her to disappear from his life.
She was only surprised he had bothered to come and rescue her at all. If he had left her, he would probably be without a wife at all now. The will only said he had to marry, after all, not that he had to stay married for any specific length of time. As a widower, he would have been free ….
No, she could not pursue that line of thought. It was one thing to accept his nature for what it was, quite another to think he would connive at her death. Shakily she raised one hand to her brow, waving the other towards him in a dismissive gesture. She was not thinking clearly. She was still overwrought, that was what her mother would say.
When she raised her head, to give him some kind of reply, she found she was alone in the room once more.
Well, what had she expected?
He had come to tell her what his plans were for her future. He had no reason to stay once he had delivered that message.
No reason at all.
Quite suddenly, it felt as though a black pit had opened up before her. She was falling, falling into it, and there was nobody to help her, nothing to cling to. She reached out and grabbed at the arms of the chair, reminding herself that she was in a pretty sitting room, on a comfortably upholstered chair, and soon she would be travelling into the country to stay at what was, by all accounts, a magnificent estate.
Her world was not really coming to an end.
So why did she start to weep? Why did the sobs rack her body, driving her to her knees on that soft, blue carpet? Why did she curl up into a tight ball, her fists clenched?
She did not know.
She did not love Robert any more, so it was foolish to cry because they were going their separate ways.
She thanked God she had fallen out of love with him, she really did.
Or being sent away from him would have broken her heart.